


My Soul—accused me—And I quailed

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Caroling, Christmas Cookies, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Pop Culture, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8828548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It was ironic, because her favorite was "It Happened One Night." Well, mildly ironic. If he told her, she'd probably explain why it wasn't an example of irony at all-- he'd learned there were some secrets worth keeping.





	

After hearing her latest scheme, Jed decided that Mary Phinney was the literal human embodiment of every Frank Capra movie, but especially “It’s a Wonderful Life.” She occasionally off-roaded as a John Hughes Molly Ringwald feature, but her heart and soul were George Bailey and the Charleston and Zuzu’s petals. He’d hitched his wagon to her, wisely he was reminded every goddam day, so he really shouldn’t complain. However, Jed Foster had lived his life ignoring what he shouldn’t do and this was no exception.

“Let me get this straight—we are all meeting up and I mean all, including that prick Byron and the she-wolf of London Anne, dressed in ugly Christmas sweaters and parading through the hospital units caroling and you are making the finale be ‘Dominick the Donkey’ on the geriatric unit. With a kazoo solo by Val Squivers. I’d rather get the lump of coal, babe,” he said. He kept folding the laundry though, so she wouldn’t be tempted to eviscerate him. He was keeping the admission that he actually liked doing the laundry as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for when he really annoyed her. He could only flirt his way out of hot water with his wife so many times.

“Well, Val offered, I couldn’t very well say no to him, could I? Not the holiday spirit,” she said, glancing at him over her vaguely hipster-y glasses, her hands typing away. She always wore her contacts to work but post-call at home, she preferred the glasses. It was not his finest hour as a feminist to admit he did too, because of the sexy-librarian thing that was so cliched and yet, and yet… He also got turned on when she starting really talking about stats in journal articles and the CDC and NIH’s shortcomings, so he wasn’t an entirely terrible person.

“That’s what you took away from what I said. Val’s kazoo,” he replied. He’d have to face the socks sooner or later. He’d try for later and work on folding the fitted sheets for the guest room first.

“I get it, you hate Byron and I get why, but he’s an amazing singer, have you heard him in the OR? He takes requests, you know. If he conducted all is conversations in recicatif, we’d probably all like him better. And Anne is a package deal, plus she passive-aggressively agreed to bring homemade gingerbread and you saw what she can do if she wants to show someone up with the cookie fundraiser,” Mary said. She was right, of course she was, but he didn’t have to like it. He and Byron had been on the outs (ha!) since early during their intern year and now existing in an uneasy détente, not unlike the Koreas. Anne Hastings wasn’t quite Mary’s nemesis but she had decided to try and outclass everyone at the Child Life cookie fundraiser. No one could argue that her contribution, intricately iced snowflake sugar cookies and a rainbow of pastel macarons, weren’t to die for, but she’d missed the point (again) and had similarly missed Mary and Charlotte snorting over her prancing about with the blue ribbon. He’d loyally voted for Mary’s snickerdoodles; she tasted like cinnamon after she made them and that was reason enough.

“But the sweaters? And ‘Dominick the Donkey?’” He wasn’t giving up without a fight though he would, most certainly, give up. But he was picking his own awful sweater. 

“The kiddos will love the sweaters and I think it’ll help them on the dementia unit figure out why we’re walking around singing, some social cueing,” she retorted, smiling a little smugly at just how good her answer was. He would be tempted to kiss that smile off her pretty face but there was still the issue of Dominick, the Italian Christmas donkey.

“I notice you are avoiding my best argument,” he said, turning to the infernal sock pile. They multiplied each wash and yet always by odd numbers. There was no escaping them, even if they had agreed to go to Stanford instead of staying in Boston. No one wore sandals in the hospital even if they were all you wore outside; socks were de rigeur.

“Jed, there are certain things you just have to accept about New England. The Sox and the Patriots forever and ever, world without end, the constant bitching about the roads, the collective assessment that even the worst Dunkin Donuts coffee is basically ambrosia…and Dominick the Donkey playing on heavy rotation as soon as the turkey gets carved. It wouldn’t be the holiday season without it,” she replied and then sniffed, picked up her mug and peered at it, set it back down without drinking. He translated that from Mary into anyone-else-ese and went over to make her a fresh cup of tea. She’d been fighting her cold all week with an arsenal of lotion-y tissues and lemon tea with honey and not much else and she hadn’t put any of her self-assigned holiday tasks on hold. He’d found her spreadsheet (not the gift one, she encrypted that) and had been stealthily doing more of the holiday stuff; it was a measure of how dopily congested she was that she hadn’t picked up on it, either to comment appreciatively or slyly add more work for him to do, thinking he was outsmarting her. 

“Can I at least request a few other, normal carols? Like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Jingle Bells?’ Here, drink this and take these,” he said, putting the mug that said “Mrs” in hand and holding out 2 Motrin in the other. Emma had given Mary the mug at her bridal shower when it came filled with Jordan almonds and he’d thought she was the only one who could have gotten away with it. 

“Yes. Henry’s working on a playlist so we can rehearse tomorrow. I had him add ‘White Christmas’ and I think he’s going to work in ‘I Have a Little Dreidel’ and some gospel stuff. Mmmm, this is perfect,” she said. Naturally, there was a rehearsal. He was just waiting to hear that there would be an interpretative dance or that they were incorporating the Harlem Shake. He worked on the socks for a minute, which were miraculously pairing up and Mary was miraculously closing her laptop of her own free will, before the timer went off on her iPhone to remind her. She’d changed the alarm to sleigh bells for the season and he thought “An angel gets his wings…”

“Chingedy-ching, Mary, if we’re going to follow your Churchill ‘On the beaches’ approach to Christmas, it’s time for bed. Finish the tea for your throat. If you get laryngitis, you’ll have to steal Val’s kazoo and I’ve heard he also has a glockenspiel he’s always volunteering to bring to parties. We can’t unleash that on the hospital—they won’t let us back in and we have loans to pay,” he said. 

He foresaw how it would go, Mary and Emma and Char all with tinsel in their hair, all the red and green yarn that could be made into Christmas sweater abominations under their white coats, Byron living up to the hype amid Anne’s muttering—the start of a new hospital tradition they’d be roped into for the rest of their careers; Sam’s investment in a real red velvet Santa hat would prove to be yet another example of why he was the best choice for unit chief. There were worse things than Mary’s caroling endeavor and he’d start lobbying for Wham!’s “Last Christmas” to be added to the rotation when Mary was mellow with success and Anne’s artisanal gingerbread. There was that shoe-horned-in conference room on 4 that nobody ever used and it wasn’t beyond him to smuggle some fake mistletoe in the pocket of his cords to help his efforts; he didn’t think even crusty old Bridget Brannan, who’d been charge on 3 since approximately 1966, would be put out enough to holler, “Not again, Dr. Foster! I run a clean establishment” like she had the first 6 or 7 times she’d found them in pre-connubial bliss, somehow never blaming Mary whose idea it had never been but who was always offended to be left out of the scolding. He was pretty sure he’d get his way; it was a season of miracles, after all, notwithstanding the kazoo solo.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was "carolers." I'm trying to alternate modern and historical stories and I thought it was time to take them out for a spin in the hospital. Dominick the Donkey is a very popular Italian Christmas carol from the 1950s which does play on heavy rotation in New England, roughly as soon as Thanksgiving ends. It is probably the most annoying Christmas carol ever (there is literally a donkey hee-haw, hee-haw line). 
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
